Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Better Than They Ever Were

It’s 8 pm on a Thursday night, and you and your girlfriends are on your second cocktail, sharing some fried calamari,shooting the shit. There are two main hot topics that monopolize Girls Night: Dieting and men. You start talking about how you hate your thighs, how you just can’t seem to lose these last 10 or 15 pounds, how you never have sex anymore, and then it starts. MEMORY LANE.

“I used to be SO thin when I was dating Brian, do you remember?”

“I never wore a size 14 before in my LIFE!”

“I used to run 5 miles and barely break a sweat, I was so in shape back then.”

The lies, the lies the lies. You were never really ever THIN. You have worn a size 14 or more than one occasion, that's why you have an arsenal of “fat jeans” at the bottom of your closet. And you ran 5 miles once in your life and couldn’t get out of bed for days afterward. Stop bullshitting yourself. You were never ANY of these things! You just think you were.

For some reason, it’s so much fun/torturous to romanticize these better versions of ourselves in our head. I’m not quite sure why we do it. Maybe it makes us feel like we were better at some point in the past so we shouldn’t feel bad about being less than perfect now? Or maybe we think it’ll somehow catapult us into starvation/exercise mania if we think we can achieve these unrealistic goals that we KNOW are impossible.

The same exact thing happens when talking about past relationships.

"But when it was good, it was good."

"He really wasn't that mean to me..."

GET REAL. You moved on for a reason. He fucking tortured you! Don't you remember how shitty you looked at work every day because you stayed up all night crying over this jerk? Do you not recall sitting on the floor in your living room in wine-stained pajamas lamenting over this break-up, wondering if you'd ever have the strength to leave the apartment EVER again?

But for some reason, we always make it sound better than it ever really was.

Whatever the reason may be, these fantasies will probably continue for the rest of our lives. In our minds, we will always have been skinnier, happier, had thicker hair, walked 5 miles to school in the snow, and had clearer skin. We all secretly know none of it was true. But you know what? It gets us through the day. And as long as it puts a smile on our faces to reminisce about these fairytale worlds, rather than be haunted by them, I’m okay with that.